


If You Want Blood

by aderyn



Series: Compounds or Stars [20]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 221b, Gen, Post Reichenbach, TRF, exactly a pint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-07
Updated: 2012-03-07
Packaged: 2017-11-01 14:31:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/357897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s blood, a fresh welling. It’s a six-patch problem. </p>
<p>Fuck alleles, then; what they had was blood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You Want Blood

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Mark Kozelek’s cover of AC/DC’s “If You Want Blood, You’ve Got It.”   
> Sounds weird, but it’s really just great: [If You Want Blood](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkM1f5Mo63o)
> 
> Also, I think the last “word” of this one constitutes cheating. Ah, well.

 

_“It’s criminal_

_There ought to be a law..._

_If you want blood, you got it.”—Young, Young, & Scott_

 

There’s blood, a fresh welling. It’s a six-patch problem.  Or rather six sponges, sixteen stitches and six bandages.

Jesus, Sherlock, says John.  Their bathroom looks like a slaughterhouse. 

Once, early on, he’d asked Sherlock what his blood type was, and Sherlock said, absently, all types.  There was a case of course, his eyes fixed on a stain John couldn’t see.

If you tilt your head any farther to the left, you might make it permanent, John said.

Arterial bleeds, fascinating, really, said Sherlock.

There was pint, exactly, in the car.

***

Under the microscope: erythrocytes burst like balloons in pure water, or rendered beautifully crenate by salt.

Hypertonicity is amusing, John.

Yes well, capillarity is funny too, Sherlock, if you like that sort of thing.

They shed far less than you’d think, considering what they tear full-tilt into.

***

John can recover from blood he’s seen, even that last, the last memory that will ever matter. 

It’s the hidden bleed he can’t live with; every surgeon knows you can’t staunch what you can’t see. 

Tie it off, burn it shut, clamp it…

There was blood in the water, but he didn’t know.

Don’t think about sharks. Don’t think about water. He knows what blood’s not thicker than.

Fuck alleles, then; what they had was blood: (Type O, Type A, Type B.)


End file.
